


Everything will be Okay

by APlagueOnBothYourHouses



Category: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Friendship, Gen, Healing, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Internalized Homophobia, Introspection, M/M, Not Beta Read, Post Mac Finds His Pride, This might be wildly ooc and it's not funny lmao but like I love projecting onto The Gays, somber but hopeful, we post full of mistakes like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-15
Updated: 2018-11-15
Packaged: 2019-08-24 00:06:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16629041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/APlagueOnBothYourHouses/pseuds/APlagueOnBothYourHouses
Summary: Completely against his will, Mac found himself saying, “I thought about it once, you know.”Perhaps surprised by Mac’s tone of voice, Dennis couldn’t force himself not to look at Mac and, by the time their eyes met, Dennis had already figured out what had prompted the sudden conversation.He tucked his arm away quickly with a glare, “Thought about what?”After soundlessly working his throat for a moment he says, as casually as possible, “Killing myself.”The millisecond the words leave his mouth, the atmosphere of the room changes dramatically. Dennis’ entire body flinches as though Mac had turned and hit him and his wide blue eyes are focused solely on Mac in an instant.





	Everything will be Okay

**Author's Note:**

> This might be wildly out of character but like, I love taking sad gays and projecting my own sad gay feelings onto them so... Enjoy a first Sunny inspired story.  
> Mind the warnings in the tags and the summary, it gets a bit dark but it ends fairly hopefully I think.

Mac doesn’t go home after his performance at the prison. 

Well, that isn’t entirely true; Frank drops him off in front of his apartment with a well intentioned pat on the shoulder and an uncharacteristically soft order for him to get some rest. He doesn’t have the emotional energy to unpack Frank’s unusual display of warmth and tact on the drive home, and he doesn’t think he will for a while. Mac doesn’t want to think about his father or coming out or existing for as long as he can put it off and acknowledging Frank’s newfound respect for his identity will force him to do just that. Another thing he doesn’t want to do is go into his apartment, because Dennis will be there. Somewhere along their unhealthily intertwined journey, Mac and Dennis have lost some integral part of what made them them. It feels like an important gear is missing and, without it, the entire machine that was their friendship could no longer spin. Despite how much he misses the other man, Mac can’t deal with anymore emotional jabs from him. So, even though Frank dropped him off, Mac doesn’t even make it into the building.

He wanders around the city slowly. Every so often he’ll see another person walking along the street or huddled in a dingy alley and he’ll move to avoid them so he doesn’t disrupt the quiet peace he’s finally established for himself. One man he saw was crouching next to a stray cat and offering it food from the can he was eating out of. It took everything in Mac’s power not to break down right there in the street at that little display of kindness, at the reminder that there are still genuinely sweet people out in the world.

Every so often he’ll feel his phone vibrate in his jeans pocket and it forces him to close his eyes and breathe deeply for a few seconds to ground himself so he won’t have a panic attack alone in a Philadelphia alleyway. He doesn’t know how to tell his friends, the only family he’s ever really had, that he can’t play along with a scheme right now. He’s always wanted what’s best for them, and to help them as much as he can, but he feels like he’s drowning. 

After almost forty full years of suppressing a part of his very soul from himself, he’s finally (literally) out but somehow he feels more suffocated than he did before. He doesn’t know how to explain that to them either. Frank might get it, after Mac’s display earlier, and he appreciates that. But Frank isn’t Charlie, who he’s known his whole life. Frank isn’t Dennis, who was one of the reasons Mac had to face his identity head on. And Frank isn’t Dee, who watched movies with him and became something of a crutch he used when her brother abandoned them all. The problem is that he and Charlie haven’t really talked about anything meaningful in months because they haven’t actually been alone together in months; Dennis, obviously, is out of the question for possibly the rest of Mac’s life, and Dee has her hands full with Dennis’ shit. Mac doesn’t want to add to her load, he knows how hard it is to take on Dennis’ emotional outbursts, which have been on the rise again since his return. He doesn’t want to burden his friends and risk losing them. Which, if he could think about it logically, is obviously an irrational fear because, despite their unconventional way of life, they haven’t left him in the dust due to any of his issues before now but after his father rejected him, (‘again’ his mind supplies unhelpfully) he just can’t risk it. So, he steels himself to avoid talking to them for as long as possible.

As long as possible turns out to be four and a half minutes after he finally checks his phone in exasperation when four of those minutes are spent with it ringing over and over again. He has a text from his dance partner, who uses far too many smiley-face emojis (which he secretly loves) and a few from Frank telling him to call Dee. The other seemingly endless messages are from her, and they vary in tone but the meaning is clear: she needs him to deal with Dennis. It always comes back to Dennis. 

Mac can’t say no, so he sends a text that he’s on his way home. 

Her response is almost instantaneous: “Thanks, he had a meltdown earlier after the parade and won’t talk to me,” right as Mac locks his phone screen and goes to put it away, she sends another message, “Frank told me what happened today when I asked him where the hell you were. Sorry it didn’t go the way you wanted.”

It’s unfathomably kind, and he has to sit down on a nearby bench and put his head between his knees for a solid minute and a half to keep himself from crying. His and Dee’s relationship had improved significantly since Dennis’ departure, but they still tended to avoid most emotionally meaningful conversations due to some unspoken agreement. The fact that she wasn’t screaming at him or hurling insults for ignoring her forty other messages speaks volumes to either how their relationship has changed or whatever Frank said to her. He hopes it’s the former, he’s come to really appreciate Dee’s presence.

So that’s how Mac finds his way home almost three full hours after he was initially dropped off. It’s dark by the time he arrives, and he doesn’t actually know how he got there- the walk is a complete blur- and somewhere in the deep recesses of his mind that fact worries him. Then, instead of going in and facing his roommate head on, he paces outside the door for several minutes anxiously. A quiet Dennis is almost worse than the Dennis who throws shit at him and spews insults like that’s all he knows how to do. 

He didn’t used to be afraid of Dennis. 

He misses when the thought of talking to him didn’t fill his chest with unease. But Mac knows that Dee wouldn’t have reached out to him if she didn’t think he was the only person who could get through to her brother, and he knows that despite how rocky things have been between them, he can still understand Dennis’ intricacies like a book he’s read a thousand times. So, with one last grounding breath, he puts his key in the lock and gently opens the front door. 

When nothing in the apartment immediately reacts to his entrance, he lets out a breath that’s half relieved and half disappointed. He realizes that he’d been bracing himself for destruction of some sort, but Dennis is huddled on the couch in an almost childlike manner, and he doesn’t respond to Mac’s presence at all. Without missing a beat, Mac immediately takes note to how small Dennis looks and, as though the last year or so of pain hadn’t happened, he’s quick to fall back into his instinctual worry over the other man.

Quietly, he moves farther into the room and then to the kitchen, where he grabs a bottle of water that he puts in front of Dennis without prompting, then he sits as far away from him on the couch as he can. When Dennis responds several seconds later by picking the bottle up and drinking it without argument, Mac’s chest is filled with an uncomfortable sensation that feels far too close to the blind adoration he used to have for Dennis before he came out and, while he knows the easiest solution would be to quash that feeling before it could remanifest, Mac’s always been a fool when it came to Dennis Reynolds. 

They sit in silence for a long while before Mac’s heart can’t handle anymore quiet and he says hesitantly, “I came out to my dad today.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Dennis’ shoulders tense. Then the other man glances at him quickly before making a noise of acknowledgement. 

Mac closes his eyes and swallows down anymore words that want to fight their way out. He shouldn’t have brought  _ that  _ up. Him being gay had been one of the triggers for Dennis leaving all those months ago and, despite Charlie’s insistence that Dennis had already known and didn’t care, Mac wasn’t blind. Before he came out, everything between him and Dennis had been as normal as their relationship could be: they were tactile and talked about anything and everything together but after he came out, Dennis pulled away violently. It was like looking into a mirror sometimes, looking at Dennis; and even though his feelings were thoroughly hurt by his actions, Mac had become very adept at spotting other people's’ sexuality crises after living through his own.

Right when Mac had started to think that they were going to be stuck silently sitting on the couch for the rest of their lives, Dennis leans forward to put his bottle of water back on the table in front of him. As he does, his sleeve rides up his arm slightly and Mac can vaguely make out several white scars from past meltdowns marring his wrist. He frowns softly in concern when he sees not so old injuries peeking out from under his sleeves. The old Mac would have coaxed Dennis into letting him clean the wounds himself, but he knows that would only start a fight with their current dynamic. So his traitorous brain decides to take a different approach.  
Completely against his will, Mac found himself saying, “I thought about it once, you know.”  
Perhaps surprised by Mac’s tone of voice, Dennis couldn’t force himself not to look at Mac and, by the time their eyes met, Dennis had already figured out what had prompted the sudden conversation. 

He tucked his arm away quickly with a glare, “Thought about  _ what _ ?” 

It sounded less like a question and more like a defensive challenge, but Mac didn’t want to fight. He was actually considering taking the heaviness back and saying something inane, chattering just to fill the quiet. Even if Dennis was mostly nonverbal after having a bad day, he wasn’t stupid. Mac didn’t have to say exactly what he meant for the man to intrinsically know, because as well as he knows Dennis, Dennis knew him too. The problem with letting this conversation go is that he doesn’t know how to help Dennis without breaking his newly founded boundaries, so he makes the decision in that moment to unload some of his own burden so that it might help them both. He hopes that in sharing one of the lowest moments of his childhood, he’ll be able to help both of them heal.  
After soundlessly working his throat for a moment he says, as casually as possible, “Killing myself.”

The millisecond the words leave his mouth, the atmosphere of the room changes dramatically. Dennis’ entire body flinches as though Mac had turned and hit him and his wide blue eyes are focused solely on Mac in an instant. Despite finally getting the other man’s full attention, the silence continues to hang between them thickly. It feels like time has stopped, like they’re the only two people on Earth. Mac doesn’t miss the irony that, just a few hours prior, he had been thinking about how he couldn’t talk to Dennis anymore and now he was letting him in on one of his biggest secrets. After several seconds, Dennis still hasn’t forced his gaze away from Mac, and his eyes belie the concern he can’t quite hide. Despite the circumstances, Mac feels his heart warm at the notion that maybe things between them aren’t as irreparable as he’d previously thought.. 

Running a hand through his hair anxiously, he elaborates “I was like eleven or twelve I think and I’d just thought the words ‘Maybe I’m gay’ for the first time in my life and... I just didn’t want that to be true... I know everyone likes to say that they knew before me but that isn’t exactly right. You all-” his throat tightens up and his next words come out shakily, “you all accepted it before me but I knew. I’ve known... you can’t not know.” Mac’s mouth clicks shit audibly as he tries to bite back a triad of desperate words that he knows won’t benefit their current conversation.

One day he’ll have a discussion with Dennis about all of the recent abuse, one day he’ll vent out his frustrations and maybe on that day he’ll get to feel vindicated. But not today, not when he needs in his soul for Dennis to know that he understood, better than any of their friends, _exactly_ what he was going through without forcing his friend into a proverbial corner… And not when Dennis’ impossibly blue eyes seem to be full of something other than disgust and anger for the first time in months.  
As he opens his mouth to make a joke and cut through the tension, Dennis clears his throat and finally interrupts by cautiously asking, “.... Why didn’t you?”  
It’s the most honest conversation they’ve had in years and that’s enough in itself to almost bring tears back to Mac’s eyes, “Honestly? I think it was Charlie asking to come over for the night to hide from his uncle that did it.... I knew I couldn’t leave him to fend for himself, and I guess I figured I’d just fix the problem and move on, you know? But uh..”  
“You can’t fix being.... like _this_.”  
Mac blinked, shocked at the way Dennis spat out ‘this’ and logged the accidental admission away for later, “Nope... There’s not a magic gay cure… But, for what it’s worth,” he says, turning to look Dennis in the eye, “I’m glad there’s not.” 

And that’s his truth. Because, for the first time in his life, Mac has reconciled his relationship between God and himself. His heart still aches fiercely when he thinks about how his father reacted to him earlier, and if he lets himself dwell on how strained his relationships with Charlie and Dennis have become, he knows that that ache will only grow more fierce. But he also knows that if he can accept himself after forty years, he can salvage his relationships with them. At his core, even when he doesn’t want to be, Mac knows that he’s a caretaker. He knows how to take care of the people he loves, both physically and emotionally, so he knows that somehow he’ll figure out how to fix the awkwardness that’s been plaguing the spaces between him and his two best friends.  
The two lapse into silence again, though this time it feels less suffocating and more contemplative, more comfortable. Finally Dennis scoots closer to Mac so that their shoulders are almost touching, “I’m… glad you didn’t.”  
Mac doesn’t ask him to elaborate; for the first time in what seems like years, he feels the tension bleed out of his frame and he can finally take a deep breath. Everything will be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!  
> I'm posting this at like 1:30 AM so it probably doesn't make any sense but like... It be like that


End file.
